Masked gun­men on Thurs­day seized gov­ern­ment build­ings in the cap­i­tal of the Crimea re­gion of Ukraine, bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves in­side and raised the Russ­ian flag, rais­ing the specter of a sep­a­rat­ist re­bel­lion that could tear the coun­try apart.
Fur­ther in­flam­ing an in­creas­ing­ly vol­a­tile sit­u­a­tion, Vik­tor F. Yanukovych re­leased a state­ment Thurs­day say­ing that he re­mained the law­ful pres­i­dent of Ukraine and ap­pealed to Rus­sia to pro­tect “my per­sonal safe­ty.” While his pre­cise where­abouts re­mained a mys­tery, Russ­ian news agen­cies re­port­ed sub­se­quent­ly that Mr. Yanukovych would hold a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day in Ros­tov-on-Don, a city in south­ern Rus­sia, six days af­ter he was driven from pow­er by mass protests and fled from Kiev, the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal.
This is crazy, there was so much hope a few days ago for everything to go smoothly but that doesn't look like its going to happen.